


Two Princes

by ClockworkCourier



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Princess Diaries Fusion, Betsy Hartnell deserves her own warning, F/F, F/M, Family Bonding, Family Secrets, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Modern Royalty, Multi, Multimedia, Princes & Princesses, Protective Siblings, Romance, Slow Burn, Social Media
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21652570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkCourier/pseuds/ClockworkCourier
Summary: The Hartnell family of Gillingham is delightfully normal; John works retail, Tom's going through his early-twenties-existential crisis, Mary Ann's charging through law school, Charlie's pretending he doesn't get good grades, and Betsy is... Betsy. Their neighbours find them pleasant, if not a little loud on weekends. No one's ever gotten arrested—except for their grandfather on one memorable occasion.Also, they're royalty.They just don't know it yet.- - -Terror Bingo fill for my "John Hartnell" square
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames, Captain Sir John Franklin/Lady Jane Franklin, John Bridgens/Harry Peglar, Lt Graham Gore/John Hartnell, Lt Henry T.D. Le Vesconte/Sarah Hartnell, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Thomas Hartnell/Lt John Irving, Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 18
Kudos: 42
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2019)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> [LAUNCHES THIS AU SO FAST THAT IT BREAKS THE SOUND BARRIER AND SHATTERS A FEW WINDOWS AND MAKES SOME DOGS BARK]
> 
> _PRINCESS DIARIES AU_ because I could! I can! I spent way too much time making fake social media stuff! I love you!

**Dinner with the Prince: Prince James III Talks Erebania’s Past, Present, and Future**

by Jay Danforth  
  
  
The man sitting across the table from me could easily fit in to the London arts scene—suave, clever, quick with the dry wit. Upon meeting, he gives me a firm handshake before humbly introducing himself. “Call me James,” he says before giving a wink and adding, “Anything but Jim.” He orders a medium rare steak and a side dish of steamed vegetables, only splurging on our bill to enjoy a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. Everything seems simple until I spot two bodyguards by the front door, and another positioned at a table near one of the windows looking out at Piccadilly. It reminds me that this is Prince James III of the Erebania, and not some English professor from Camden.  
  
We casually discuss Erebania’s political affairs, most of which have made headlines over the past eight years since the prince’s ascendance to the throne in 2011. After Prince James II’s tumultuous forty-year reign and an economic downturn that almost forced the principality out of the Eurozone, it’s hard to imagine that my dining partner almost singlehandedly pulled his country out of what _Forbes_ called “an inescapable financial mire”. Pointing this out, Prince James smiles and sips his wine. “I can’t take all the credit,” he says. “My husband would kill me if I did.”  
  
The prince estimates that Prince Consort Francis boasts about half the responsibility for recent headlines, excluding tabloids. An Irish native, Prince Francis married into the Erebanian royal family in 2013, effectively marking a massive shift in the country’s operation. Politically savvy and the quintessential power behind the throne, Prince Francis outlined the Erebanian Decade Plan, now a textbook case of successful economic and political relief. Under his watchful eye, Erebania climbed out of its thirty-year-old budget deficit, flourishing from its newfound tourism sector and carefully maintained trade agreements.  
  
A by-product of the plan was the reparation of severed family ties. The Erebanian royal family’s deficit extended from its finances to its relations, and on this point, I refer to a famous _Sun_ edition from 1995, showing a snarling James II on the front page. James III grimly nods at this reference and says, “He didn’t so much chop down the family tree—he mulched it.” After an explosive falling-out between members of the ruling Gambier family over the course of the 1990s—as well as an infamous altercation with the Prince of Monaco at a 1996 charity gala—the royal family splintered with several members retreating into anonymity in England and France. Now, James and Francis aim to repair these bonds, seeking out remaining members in order to put a new face on Erebania.  
  
“This was a family,” James tells me. “And I want to put to right what my father did wrong.”  
  


Click to continue  
  
Comments (247)  
  


**Related News:**

Erebanian Prince on LGBTQ+ Issues: “I am what I am”  
  
Photo Gallery: Erebanian Royal Family – 1996 to Now  


Quiz: Which Prince Francis Quote Are You?   
  


👑 👑 👑

👑 👑 👑

👑 👑 👑

👑 👑 👑

**Gillingham Local Wins Rosebush Competition  
** by Lucy Salton  
  
Sarah Hartnell of Gillingham has won the annual Medway Towns Rose Competition with her stunning display of tea roses. The competition involved twenty-four competitors from across the Medway Towns region, including last year’s winner, Mrs Genevieve Shaw of Brompton. The judges favoured Mrs Hartnell’s display, claiming that her roses were particularly vivid and full and were clearly well-manicured. Her secret? “Coffee grounds as fertiliser and getting my children to water them every day!” she says.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [throws this down and sprints away, ignoring that it was supposed to be way longer; double-ignoring that I haven't updated this in ages]

Tom’s on his lunch break when he gets a single text from Mary Ann. Two words as innocuous as they are ominous: _Come home._  
  
He blinks and takes another sip of his Lucozade, thumbing back through his earlier conversations with his sister for anything that might be amiss. It’s all reminders to pick things up from Tesco, asking Tom to be a go-between and tell Charlie to turn his music down, and endless memes. He sets his bottle on the card table beside him and quickly types a response.  
  
  
  
He smiles before he takes another sip, looking up to mind the clock for when his break ends. It’s one of his long days at the shop and one of the projects is going to take at least six days of intensive work. Smith’s a decent boss—fair, at least—but he tends to be a bit callous when it comes to letting people off early. Tom’s got half a mind to tell Mary Ann to hold down the fort as needed and wait for either him or John to get off work. Before he can make the decision, though, his phone buzzes again.

  
  
Tom stares at his screen, the rim of the bottle resting on his bottom lip. Mary Ann’s not prone to exaggeration, and he’d be more inclined to think Betsy’s bullshitting him than his more stalwart younger sister. Mary Ann’s also going to university to be a lawyer, and although that may require creative lying from her in the future, she’s at the stage of her education where acrid legal corruption hasn’t seeped into her soul yet.  
  
He sends back a quick: _Pic?_ and waits.  
  
And he doesn’t have to wait long. Not even a half minute later, he gets a slightly blurry image clearly taken around a corner of the doorframe connecting the kitchen to the dining room. There, half-obscured, is his mother still dressed in her scrubs and Pikachu lanyard, leaning up against the kitchen island with a salad bowl at her elbow. Across from her, seated almost primly on one of the second-hand barstools, is a well-dressed man carefully holding one of their coffee mugs (Tom thinks it’s the frog one) like the frailest piece of a bone china tea service.  
  
Tom squints, then uses his fingers to zoom in on the man’s profile. Even with the motion blur, his features are strong and easy to distinguish: a pronounced nose, squared jawline, small creases descending from prominent cheekbones. Tom taps away from the conversation to pull up his internet browser, quickly typing ‘prince of ererbana’ without stopping to fix his typo. Google gets the gist and pulls up suggested images of several people.  
  
One of them definitely matches the man in Mary Ann’s picture. Prince James III winks up from a candid shot taken at a charity gala in Barcelona, the spitting image of the mystery man apparently drinking tea in the Hartnell family kitchen.  
  
“Jesus Christ,” Tom whispers, half-echoed into the Lucozade bottle. Then, he rapidly texts his sister back.  
  
  
  
A short moment later, Mary Ann sends another picture taken from their front window facing Exmouth Road. There, just beyond the rise of his mother’s prize rosebushes, is the sleek outline of a black car pulled close to the curb in the narrow street. The roses make it hard to distinguish the make and model, but Tom’s seen enough luxury vehicles in his _Top Gear_ -inspired daydreams to know that it probably costs more than Tom makes in a year.   
  
Of course, this presents the classic conundrum: the monarch of a principality is sitting in one’s kitchen, talking to one’s mother. Tom looks at the clock once more, internally considers how much Smith must _really_ like him, and promptly decides to use the old go-to of an undefined “family emergency”. If Smith asks about it, he’ll be caught in the deadlock of bad manners and everyone at the shop will judge him. It’s foolproof.  
  
The last text he sends Mary Ann is a quick ‘omw’. 

👑 👑 👑

Once upon a time in the 1980s, _Tatler_ magazine ran a short column about Prince James III and his family enjoying powdery ski slopes at an upscale alpine lodge in St. Moritz. Two pictures accompanied the paragraphs detailing the Prince’s father’s new wife’s outfit (a retina-burning Henri Duvillard ensemble) and the special bottle of cognac the family shared to commemorate the trip (a mindbogglingly expensive bottle from Rémy Martin). The picture taking up the upper half of the page portrays a grinning younger Prince James III, his father, and his stepmother against a backdrop of cobalt-blue mountains and the twinkling sheet of lights in St. Moritz. The second smaller insert is of James III and his younger half-brother, the latter’s face obscured by a black scarf pulled up over his nose so only two wide blue eyes are visible. A few wisps of red-gold hair peek out from under his helmet.  
  
The caption for the insert photo simply reads ‘Princes James and Prince Thomas enjoying the slopes’.   
  
Most _Tatler_ readers either aren’t old enough to remember this article or, if they read it, gave it a cursory once-over before enjoying a considerably more exciting article about the scandalous results of a toiletry company heir’s debaucherous Bahamian yacht cruise.   
  
One copy, however, ended up cut from its page, carefully folded twice over, and tucked away in a Keds shoebox full of other magazine clippings, photographs, and other little mementos. Said shoebox ended up on a dusty shelf in a closet in a little Gillingham house, beside a biscuit tin full of sewing supplies (as all biscuit tins _should_ be) and a faux leather-bound photo album full of embarrassing photographs from back when waterbeds were a popular commodity.  
  
For twenty-six years, the shoebox remained stationary on the shelf, collecting a fine layer of dust and insect carcasses. Then, on a brisk October afternoon, Sarah Hartnell stands on her toes, brushing off dust and bugs with the edge of her right hand, and carefully tugs the box forward until it tilts and falls into her hands.   
  
Without much ceremony, she carries the box back into the kitchen where an Erebanian monarch enjoys some Twinings Earl Grey out of a mug shaped like a frog.   
  
“I didn’t know if you wanted to see the album, too,” she says, taking the box’s lid off and tucking it underneath. “But this should be good enough, yeah?”  
  
“Of course,” says Prince James III, setting the mug aside to reach out and pick up a single photograph. He smiles immediately—like a normal human being rather than displaying the tight, practiced smile of royalty—and flips the picture around to show her. “Some wonderful ‘80s fashion choices.”  
  
“Are those—”  
  
“Legwarmers. Naturally.”  
  
Setting the photograph down between them on the faux-granite surface of the kitchen island, the prince thumbs through a few more clippings and pictures in the box. Creased magazine clippings, overexposed Fujifilm prints, a few handwritten notes on hotel stationary or napkins—he finally picks up the _Tatler_ article and smiles.  
  
“Oh, I _do_ remember this,” he says. “One of the worst vacations of my life.”  
  
“Was it?”  
  
“Absolutely. My brother and my father spent half the time arguing over where Thomas was to go to school and what he was meant to study, and I spent the rest of it dodging my stepmother and sulking. By the end of it, Thomas left our chateau and took a room at the Badrutt’s Palace Hotel before going backpacking through Switzerland for the rest of the month.” He chuckles before tucking the clipping back into the box and taking a sip of his tea. “And you know what was the worst part? I wasn’t angry at Thomas for the same reason my father was. I was angry that he didn’t take me with him.”  
  
Sarah snorts at the same time her phone goes off. Half interested, she looks at the text and grins. “Word’s getting around, I think.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
She turns her phone to show a long string of text messages, filled with caps lock phrases and an entire gallery of emojis. “Betsy,” is all she says, as though it’s a perfectly suitable explanation.  
  
“That’s your youngest, correct?”  
  
“Mhmm.” Sarah pockets her phone and swirls her tea around with the tip of her finger. Rather saint-like in appearance, she happily ignores her phone buzzing like a hive of disturbed bees. Then, she hums thoughtfully and reaches into the box, pulling out a glossy photograph of a young, wild-haired, madly grinning woman in an electric blue cocktail dress deftly smashing a piece of wedding cake into a handsome man’s face. “Here. This is much better,” she says, handing the photograph to James.  
  
He takes it and immediately laughs. “Oh, that’s brilliant. I should get this enlarged and framed.”  
  
“Please do. I think it really captures our essence.”  
  
At that moment, there’s a commotion at the front door: hushed but urgent voices, keys jingling, the definite sound of someone being rapidly thwacked by a sibling, and then shoes scuffling—  
  
“Shoes off in the house!” Sarah calls, not bothering to look up from the Keds box.  
  
A pause of about ten seconds worth of shoe removal, and then the muffled thump-thump-thump of three pairs of socked feet on hardwood. In something like a comedy routine, three corresponding heads pop out from around the doorframe, peering into the kitchen. The tallest head looks delightedly baffled and announces, “Charlie is absolutely going to lose his _shit_ when he gets home.”  
  
The shortest head glares up at the tallest and says, “Don’t say _shit_ in front of him, idiot.”  
  
“But you just said it.”  
  
“I said it to make an example!”  
  
“The only example you’re making is how to be a proper hypocrite.”  
  
The middle head, looking comparatively exhausted, says, “Hi, mum.”  
  
“Hi, Thomas,” Sarah replies. “Would you three like to come in and join us?”  
  
They disappear around the corner and the hushed whispers return. Sarah rolls her eyes and takes another sip of her tea before their procession reappears and quietly files into the kitchen, keeping against the far wall as if the Crown Prince of Erebania is liable to explode all over the cabinetry. Said prince just smiles, showing absolutely no sign of impending detonation.   
  
“So, these are my oldest three,” Sarah says, gesturing to the line-up. “John on the left, Thomas in the middle, Mary Ann on the right. The other two are inbound, I’m assuming.”  
  
James smiles warmly. “A pleasure to meet all of you,” he says, lifting up the frog mug in salutation.   
  
John urgently looks between his mother and the monarch leaning on their kitchen island. “Do we, uh, bow? Or curtsy? Or genuflect?”  
  
“Heavens, no,” James replies with a laugh. “This meeting is completely informal and, I confess, a little unannounced. If you’d like to have a cup of tea or what ever you’d like while we wait, you certainly can.”  
  
Sarah’s phone buzzes again. She looks at it for just a moment. “You won’t have to wait very long,” she says.  
  
No sooner does she say it then there’s another commotion outside. This time, there’s the sound of an argument, followed by the front door opening with such force that it rattles on its hinges and definitely hits the wall beside it. Then there’s a scuffle (“Charlie! Out of the _way_ , you human toilet! _Move!_ ”), a shriek, more thwacking (“Betsy! Ow! St— Stop! Jesus! _Ow!_ ”), and a triumphant crowing usually reserved for movie scenes of ancient battlefields, and—   
  
Another pause for shoe removal.   
  
Then, the single most harried and colourful girl appears in the doorframe, followed by the human equivalent of a sullen mule right behind her (provided the mule had a bad green dye job). The only word out of either of them, or perhaps more adequately, speaking for all five, comes from Betsy.  
  
“Oh. My. God. Shut up. Shut _up._ ”  
  
Sarah takes another fortifying sip of her tea before silently getting up, turning on the stovetop burners, reaching up into the cabinet and taking out two different boxes of tea, then setting five mugs on the counter. She turns to her brood and the smiling prince in her kitchen, looking at them as though this is precisely the sight that happens in Gillingham every day. “Maybe we should take this into the sitting room,” she says.


End file.
